Assistant professor of film and digital media Jennifer Maytorena Taylor has received a fellowship for a summer residency at one of the nation’s leading contemporary arts organizations.
She is one of 84 artists from 18 states and six countries—out of a pool of 978 applicants—who have been awarded a 2018 fellowship from the MacDowell Colony, located in Peterborough, New Hampshire.
The incoming group of MacDowell Fellows also includes Pulitzer Prize-winning author Andrew Sean Greer, poet Monica Youn, composers Mark Dresser, Laura Schwendinger, and Kate Soper, and playwrights Brian Selznick and Rebecca Taichman.
A panel of distinguished professionals in each discipline selects MacDowell Fellows based solely on their talent, as evidenced by a work sample and project description. The highly competitive fellowships, each with an average value of $10,000, include the use of a private studio for a period of up to eight weeks, accommodations, and three meals a day.
Taylor said she plans to use the fellowship to work on her new feature documentary film in progress, currently titled The Gut.
The MacDowell Colony was founded in 1907 by composer Edward MacDowell and his wife, pianist Marian MacDowell, “to nurture the arts by offering creative individuals of the highest talent an inspiring environment in which to produce enduring works of the imagination.”
Each year, MacDowell welcomes more than 300 architects, composers, filmmakers, interdisciplinary artists, theatre artists, visual artists, and writers from across the United States and around the world.
More than 14,500 residencies have been awarded since its inception, and past recipients have included Ayad Akhtar, James Baldwin, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Ellen Driscoll, Louise Erdrich, Osvaldo Golijov, Cathy Park Hong, Dee Rees, Colson Whitehead, and Julia Wolfe.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon is currently the chairman of MacDowell’s board of directors.
